Charles Martin‘s solo exhibition ended yesterday, Faces, Figures, Fantasy, at Global Vision Gallery in Brooklyn ended yesterday. This was the inaugural exhibition of Ernani Silva’s new space. Regardless we want to present you the work of Martin, a photographer, filmmaker and writer.
Also, Charles Martin was just awarded a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University for this Fall, for a residency to develop a photo book he has been envisioning for a while, “Optical Thinking.”
Martin found his calling in photography almost by accident, whilst documenting his first trip to Brazil in 1982. The animation of its people, backdropped by an environment heaving with stories, ritual and passion, affected him greatly. He formed long-lasting friendships with locals, Ernani Silva among them, and through attentive observation became privy to the undercurrent flows which connect; rhizomatic existences. The photographs he brought back and subsequently decided to exhibit, garnered much attention, and cemented his desire to pursue the practice further. When looking back on the ensuing years of rigorous work, Martin notes:
“The first photographers in my life were my parents. Mom used automatic cameras and Dad amused himself with a Rolleiflex and, in a corner of the basement, a provisional darkroom. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to photograph and often exhibit, home and away, in such places as New York, Brazil, Paris, Algeria and Lisbon. For some, the photographs provide less of a tour and, more, visual excursion.”
In Faces, Figures, Fantasy, Martin has carefully selected photographs from his entire oeuvre, to serve as an optical mediation in conveying the immanence of bodies; whether human, cloud, water or other. Their essences are caught momentarily inside the frame to communicate variously, in corpus or through reflection in another medium, their inner ecstasy.
Finally, Unrelated to the “Faces, Figures, Fantasy” exhibition in Brooklyn, arrangements have recently been made to show a film of Martin, about the late painter Ed Clark, to accompany an exhibition of his in England.
Global Vision Gallery
87 Fort Greene Place, Brooklyn.
https://ernanisilvaart.com/
